Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar un­veiled a sev­en-pil­lar man­i­festo yes­ter­day, promis­ing free com­put­ers for sec­ondary school stu­dents and an im­proved prison sys­tem. She was in­tro­duced to the podi­um to He­len Red­dy's hit tune I am Woman, which sent sup­port­ers in­to a fren­zy.

Thou­sands waved flags, and one per­son even faint­ed in the heat. But as the sun set, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told sup­port­ers that they would rise from the abyss of dark­ness which the Patrick Man­ning regime had im­posed on cit­i­zens over the past nine years. She said the Man­ning lega­cy had failed the peo­ple of T&T and it was time for a new be­gin­ning. "The hard work of build­ing this econ­o­my stands be­fore us...We are now faced with a trou­bled econ­o­my glob­al­ly," she said. "It is not go­ing to be easy be­cause de­te­ri­o­ra­tion has set in al­most every area of our so­ci­ety."

She al­so said there was a cri­sis of trust among the pop­u­la­tion, and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship would have to sta­bilise the econ­o­my, re­build so­ci­ety and to re­store trust in Gov­ern­ment. She said the im­me­di­ate task was to in­tro­duce greater ac­count­abil­i­ty in Gov­ern­ment. She al­so called on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to stop at­tack­ing the me­dia, as it was a pil­lar of true democ­ra­cy. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that there would be chal­lenges, Per­sad-Bisses­sar vowed to build uni­ty.�She said pil­lar one of her man­i­festo would en­sure that there would be an ed­u­ca­tion-dri­ven strat­e­gy which would sup­port di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, cre­at­ing less en­er­gy de­pen­dence and busi­ness growth in the knowl­edge sec­tors.

"Pil­lar two of our de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy will deal with pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion and so­cial jus­tice," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "The num­ber of peo­ple who con­tin­ue to live un­der the pover­ty line is about 20 per cent. For an en­er­gy-rich so­ci­ety, this is un­ac­cept­able. "We will set a tar­get of�two per cent re­duc­tion of pover­ty per year, be­gin­ning 2011 and we will lift the peo­ple out of pover­ty on a house­hold ba­sis by a range of strate­gies out­lined in the man­i­festo," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. She al­so vowed to ex­pand in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, say­ing: "We will pro­vide a com­put­er to every stu­dent who en­ter sec­ondary school, as well as pro­vide com­mu­ni­ty-based In­ter­net cafes so that every home will have a ba­sis for e-learn­ing."

She said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship would cre­ate a more di­ver­si­fied, knowl­edge-in­ten­sive econ­o­my. The UNC leader al­so promised to im­prove na­tion­al and per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty. "We will re­think the prison sys­tem, re­or­gan­ise the jus­tice sys­tem and make in­ter­ven­tions in a pre­ven­ta­tive na­ture," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment would al­so cre­ate good gov­er­nance and peo­ple par­tic­i­pa­tion. "We will strength­en ex­ist­ing in­sti­tu­tions, en­hance democ­ra­cy and strength­en ex­e­cu­tion and de­liv­ery ca­pac­i­ty," she said.